HBO Max dropped a surprise 30-minute special called “A Story of Derry” overnight on Saturday, October 31st. The streamer’s own post called the drop “IT’s a surprise Halloween treat” and promised a look at the origins of IT in Derry. HBO’s logline says three youngsters venture into the Western Wood and meet “a terrifying ancient spirit” hundreds of years before Pennywise. Tazbah Chavez, a “Reservation Dogs” alum, directed it from a script by Cherie Dimaline and Jasmyne Flournoy. HBO Max lists it as its own title and not as a ninth episode of season 1. An ASL version has a separate listing. A few viewers struggled to find it. It sits under the “Related” tab on the show’s page and turns up in search.
There is no clown and no Bill Skarsgård in it. The special opens by saying the legend viewers already know was the gentle version. Season 1 told that legend in its fourth episode, “The Great Swirling Apparatus of Our Planet’s Function”, and the special goes back to tell the rest. HBO did something similar last Halloween, when it released the second episode of season 1 two days early. The cast includes Kiawentiio, Morningstar Angeline and Zahn McClarnon, and season 2, set in 1935, still has no release date. Whether the special earns its place beside the main show is the question to carry into the spoilers. Warning beyond this point there are spoilers for “A Story of Derry” and for the stranger, the deaths, the ending and every piece of new lore.
The special opens by saying the legend viewers already know was the gentle version.”
The opening card is the special’s whole pitch, so it is worth reading in full. It says “Generations ago, when the Kollu first preyed on our people, we left warnings for those who would come after. But we hid the truth inside a gentler tale, one our children could carry. This is the story we do not teach. This is the part we left out.” SlashFilm calls what follows “a more warts-and-all retelling of a legend we’ve heard before” and says “certain details have been retconned” from the season 1 flashback. Indiatimes reads the card as proof that the first generation “chose which details to pass on and which ones to bury” for later generations. JoBlo’s Tyler Nichols adds that the special begins in a Native language and switches to English after a few lines. He calls that “the ideal way to present the story with a foreign tongue to an English-speaking audience” and says the average viewer is not a fan of subtitles.
The story proper starts with hunger. A tribe is running out of food, and three young members of it enter the forbidden Western Wood anyway. Necani (Kiawentiio) leads the trio. FandomWire’s recap says the tribe’s council is debating whether to leave its land. It adds that Necani sneaks out at night with two friends because she believes the forest could save them. The woods answer fast. The creature attacks them in different forms. JoBlo’s Nichols says it keeps “that classic Pennywise attitude” whenever it speaks from another shape. He also hears “an almost Prey aesthetic to it” in a story built around a young Native American girl.
Zahn McClarnon plays a stranger the youngsters meet in the woods. He is the warrior who made the dagger that frightens IT. FandomWire says he drives the creature off with that dagger and takes the youngsters to his camp. Over a meal, the recap says, he explains that the creature feeds on fear and likes its victims terrified before it eats them. It also wiped out his village, once in the form of a giant moose, and JoBlo notes a moose form that can “cause so much destruction” when the creature is not farming fear. FandomWire adds that he tells them about Maturin, a cosmic being who beat the monster before Earth existed. Maturin sealed it inside a prison that crashed here. That prison later broke, and in a vision Maturin showed him where the pieces lay, so he forged the dagger from them.
Then the story turns on the stranger. FandomWire says one of Necani’s friends works out that the meat they have been eating is human. The man worships the creature as a god and offers it human sacrifices, the recap says. The youngsters flee with his dagger and leave him defenseless, and the creature kills him soon after. If that account holds, it is the sharpest idea in the special. The weapon that scares IT came from a man who worshipped IT, and the youngsters took it by running. That also fits the card’s promise that the version told to children was cleaned up.
Necani’s rebellion costs her. FandomWire says the tribe notices that the youngsters are missing and that Sesqui (Morningstar Angeline), the tribe’s leader, leads a search party into the woods. Sesqui is Necani’s mother. The creature goes after her grief before her body. FandomWire says it shows her her late husband, who now looks much older, then takes the form of a baby and stabs her. Necani arrives with the dagger and the creature backs away, FandomWire says, but Sesqui’s wounds are too deep and she dies in her daughter’s arms. FandomWire adds that season 1’s fourth episode had already said Sesqui decided the tribe must leave and was later killed in the woods. After her death, FandomWire says, the council chooses to leave its home, and Necani refuses to give up.
The ending turns on Maturin. The encounter leads to the 13 sacred pillars that cage IT inside the land that becomes Derry, and FandomWire’s recap says how. In that account Necani remembers the stranger’s story and reaches out to the cosmic turtle, and Maturin answers. He tells her of a cave in the western forest where the monster crashed and where the broken pieces of its prison still lie. She must collect them, place them inside turtle shells and bury them at key points across the forest. The shells work as pillars that form an invisible barrier. The dagger is made of the same material, FandomWire adds, which is why the creature fears it. In season 1 a pillar was disturbed and the characters had to restore the cage, so the special finally explains why the pillars exist at all.
Maturin is the special’s biggest piece of lore. In King’s novel the cosmic turtle stands for creation and order against the chaos of IT. He is also one of the Twelve Guardians of the Beams in “The Dark Tower” books, which ties this show to King’s wider multiverse. ComicBook.com notes that season 1 had shown Maturin only as a school mascot and a turtle charm. JoBlo’s Nichols calls the new look “an awesome cosmic appearance” and says it comes during a drug-induced trip. He hopes “the creators are more comfortable with showing him” from here.
The early verdicts are warm and hedged. Nichols admits the special “doesn’t really tell us anything that any loyal King fan wasn’t already aware of” but still calls it “a fun little surprise” for fans. He says the story would feel “too much like a detour” inside a full season. Winter is Coming’s Daniel Roman calls the episode 4 flashback “one of the highlights of the entire series to date” and says returning to it was “an inspired choice” for the special. FandomWire’s Hashim Asraff calls the dagger’s origin “a satisfying answer to one of Season 1’s biggest mysteries” and a strong setup for season 2. Season 2 centers on the 1935 massacre of the Bradley Gang. SlashFilm reports that showrunner Brad Caleb Kane told the New York Post that season 2 brings “New kids, new characters, maybe some old characters, and the same old Pennywise” to a very different set of circumstances. ComicBook.com notes there is no word yet on how season 2 will tie into season 1 or the films.
What Do You Think? Did “A Story of Derry” earn its place beside the main series, or does it only repeat what season 1 already told us? Is the stranger’s twist the right way to complicate the dagger? And does Maturin belong in this story, or does the special show too much of him too soon?
See you on the next binge!
